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Peter’s prisoner list
Peter’s prisoner list
In 2004 Joanna Lumley ran a campaign to help provide proper pensions for Gurkha veterans from the second world war. On hearing about this, Veronica O’Neal (Peter’s second wife) remembered that there was documentation in her loft dating back to the war, about Gurkhas Peter had served with.
This documentation was a list of serving personnel which Peter kept a record of throughout his time in captivity, taking it from camp to camp, and hiding it from the Japanese as written records such as this were strictly banned.
On liberation from the Japanese, Peter’s list was all but lost. A search of camps, by allied troops, to find hidden ‘treasures’ unearthed the list and it was reunited with Peter by Lt Colonel HGJ Purcell.
The following page was attached to the list and goes some way towards explaining both the effort involved, as well as the jeopardy:
This document includes a letter to Peter O'Neal from Lieut Col H.G.J Purcell, expressing gratitude for this having been kept up to date, as well as a copy of the entire list.
Click on the image to see the entire list.
The government was paying £10,000 to the former POWs, but documentation to prove claims was scarce. There were believed to be around 2,000 cases where a Gurkha or his widow who was alive when the scheme was announced had a valid claim. In its re-typed form, the list of names was more than 20 pages long, with approximately 60 names to a page! It is believed that the first two pages alone verified the names of 40 claimants.
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